Mindpixel

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Mindpixel was a web-based collaborative artificial intelligence project which aimed to create a database of millions of human validated true/false statements, or probabilistic propositions. Participants in the project created one-line statements which aimed to be objectively true or false to 20 other anonymous participants. In order to submit their statement they had first to check the true/false validity of 20 such statements submitted by others. Participants whose replies were consistently out of step with the majority had their status downgraded and were eventually excluded. Likewise, participants who made contributions which others could not agree were objectively true or false had their status downgraded. A validated true/false statement is called a mindpixel.

The project enlisted the efforts of thousands of participants and claimed to be "the planet's largest artificial intelligence effort".

The project was conceived by the late Chris McKinstry, a computer scientist and former Very Large Telescope operator for the European Southern Observatory in Chile. McKinstry believed that the Mindpixel database could be used in conjunction with a neural net to produce a body of human "common sense" knowledge which would have market value. Participants in the project are awarded shares in any future value according to the number of mindpixels they have successfully created.

Mindpixel started in 2000 and had 1.4 million mindpixels in January 2004. It was developed out of the earlier MISTIC (1996) AI project, also created by McKinstry. The database and its software is known as GAC, which stands for "Generic Artificial Consciousness" and is pronounced Jak.

On 20th September 2005 Mindpixel lost its free server and is no longer operational. It was being rewritten by Chris McKinstry as Mindpixel 2 and was intended to appear on a new server in France. Chris McKinstry died on 23rd January, 2006 and the future of the project and the integrity of the data is uncertain.

Some Mindpixel data (the 80K set) is being utilised (at 2006) by Michael Spivey of Cornell University in his Language Action Perception Dynamics Laboratory to study theories in high-level reasoning and continuous temporal dynamics of thought.

Another similar artificial intelligence project is Open Mind Common Sense run by MIT.

The mindpixel web site currently redirect to questsin.net.

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